Fragmentation (and assimilation)

Our country is supposed to be one big melting pot, and that probably worked fine never.  With our start we had the have and have-nots (slaves), and as time progressed, the have-nots moved to include the Irish, Polish, Jews, and Germans (not in that order).  The newer have-nots eventually assimilated, but the descendants of the slaves, in general, continued to be the have-nots.  We also began seeing asians and hispanics, many of which also assimilated, though as yet to not the same degree, as Chinatowns and hispanic neighborhoods in major cities attest, but give them time and eventually all will boil down into the pot.  Eventually they should all boil down into Americans, but for some reason, something has prompted the need for American to have a prefix, so now we don't have Americans, but we have Nationality/Ethnicity-Americans.  And while some of these Americans have merged seamlessly with the whole, many have not, and at the rate we are going, they won't.  For me, three groups stand out in this tapestry, African, Hispanic, and Native, as groups that still receive a disproportionate amount of bigotry, and oddly, those groups have been with us the longest.  I wish the answer was just as simple as "We are all Americans," but it isn't and until everyone, regardless of their hyphenate, is treated equally, we will continue to have problems.  At some point Euro-Americans need to get the point, and as long as they continue to believe they hold all the answers, while apparently holding none (since they don't discuss these things with the others), we will have discord.  That discord will only be amplified as Muslim-Americans are added to the mix, especially as they are being demonized, perhaps worse than the Irish.  Distrust of change is fine, but at some point that distrust needle should move forward, and how long is too long... slavery ended in this country over 150 years ago, the indigenous peoples were here before us, and after the Mexican-American war (which ended in 1848) the United States added a large hispanic population.

If assimilation is them giving up knowledge of their mother tongue and tossing their culture aside, then I would say the cost outweighs the benefits, but if assimilation means treating them fairly in the eyes of the law, perhaps we should try for that, because in this country the law is supposed to treat everyone fairly, even rich billionaires.

[This sort of rambled, but I am posting it anyway.]